The Sheila Variations

The Books: "1984" (George Orwell)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

1984, by George Orwell. I covered much of my thoughts about this book in my post yesterday about Animal Farm.

A bit more about Orwell the man (there's so much there): Orwell himself wrote about his youth:

I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.

His entire life can be seen as a process of "facing" (something that Christopher Hitchens goes into in depth in his book Why Orwell Matters). What does it mean to "face"? To really face? Not just unpleasant facts about outer reality - but unpleasant facts about how you think about things, and where you might be wrong - or just too rigid? I mean, how many people do that? As in: Okay, I can feel I have a bias against such and such ... it's a strong bias ... Can I look at that bias and see where it might be really coming from? Is it just from "the way things are" and I am convinced I am right ... or am I missing something? Am I afraid of something? Am I wrong? Orwell's whole life was about asking such questions about himself. It is truly remarkable. He questioned Empire, racism, Stalinism, Communism, misogyny, anti-Semitism ... he recognized his biases in all of these areas. Some could not be overcome, some were not meant to be overcome, but ALL were "faced" ... and he did it through his writing. A straining questioning curious ruthless sensibility he had. No wonder he intimidates. No wonder he is seen as an enemy by many. Not just for his views (or, I don't think it's just because of his views) ... but because he shames those who refuse to question themselves. He shames the "people of the lie" - those who absolutely refuse to examine themselves, refuse. People have blinders on. People insist that SUCH AND SUCH IS TRUE ... you ask me why it is true? Well, that should be obvious - because I FEEL SO STRONGLY ABOUT IT. Strong feelings are not enough for Orwell. They are just the jumping-off point to ask the tough questions. He is not above having "strong feelings" ... but instead he wonders: Maybe such and such is NOT true ... you ask me why it is not true? Well, that should be obvious ... BECAUSE I feel so strongly about it ... I'm thinking of the raging (loud) homophobic folks - preachers, politicians, whatever - who inevitably are discovered paying some gigolo for gay sex and having a wide stance in a bathroom stall in the midwest somewhere. These people (as far as I know, I don't know them obviously) ... are not questioning themselves. They are not saying: "I have a violent reaction to homosexuals. Where is that coming from? Is it because I REALLY believe that it is wrong? Or is something else going on?" If you really believe it's wrong, that's one thing - I don't respect your position, but I see that it's a sincere belief. But these loudly homophobic anti-gay guys have been revealed, time and time again, as closet cases ... you know, an example of "he doth protest too much". Orwell had his blind-spots, just like everybody else on the planet. He worked at himself. He looked, he examined ... he was not afraid to break with the pack, and he was not afraid to show himself as in process - which I think many people find VERY threatening. I have found it in small doses on my blog - when I write a post that is mainly about questioning or contemplating, or NOT being positional ... overwhelmingly, people show up to tell me what to think, how to react, whatever. The very fact of NOT taking a position, or questioning one's own motives or thoughts ... is seen as contemptible by many. Or - not contemptible. I'm going to stay with the word "threatening". When I see these what seem to be kneejerk reactions to me being in process ... it always makes me think - I don't know ... people get threatened by that. They can't stand it. It makes them nuts.

Sometimes a violent anti-reaction to something is indicative of deeper issues. That's been my experience anyway. Not just in observing others but in observing myself. There have been times in my life (and I'm sure we've all experienced stuff like this) - where I will have a really bad reaction to somebody - like they just rub me the wrong way, they push my buttons ... I find it uncomfortable to be around them, etc. And usually I suffer through the situation, getting annoyed, ranting about it to my friends, writing in my journal, whatever ... But it's happened a couple of times that eventually I have a breakthrough in my thinking about this person. It happened with a woman in an acting class I was in a couple of years ago. She was what I could call an "emotional vampire" ... she was very talented, but her self-deprecating manner was overwhelming and eventually annoying. She would almost bow in front of me, like, "I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy" ... and it made it impossible to have a conversation with her. She latched onto me. She would glance at me during the notes given to her during a scene, seeing how I would respond. It made me so uncomfortable. I could feel she was giving me WAY too much power. Listen, babe, I'm struggling just like you, I'm in the shit just like you ... focus on your own damn self!! She took up a lot of brain space. Like - I thought about her a lot. I bitched about her. I was in a state of unconsciousness - I was just reacting. And I'm not sure what it was that snapped ... but eventually, after all of this, I finally asked myself the question, "Sheila. What is going on with YOU right now? Forget about her - what is happening with YOU?" It was not a comfortable moment. I was so certain that I was "right" in my opinion, I felt harassed by her - she hovered by my side, she over-complimented me, whatever - I felt "right". So to take a step back from that and say, "Wait a second ... why am I so invested in being RIGHT here? What is going on with you??" And I made some realizations. I saw myself in her. (Of course). It's not a part of myself that I am particularly proud of, and it is a part of myself that I work to suppress. The openly insecure person, the one who doesn't feel worthy to be in the same room with tremendously talented successful people, the one who is unable to take a compliment without brushing it off, the one who is so talented - but can't ever own it. Blah blah blah, the list goes on. My anti-reaction to this person was a reaction to those parts of myself that I am ashamed of. That she was just wearing on her sleeve. Jung talks about shadow sides ... the darker side of you, the things you can't admit or won't admit ... This woman was my shadow side. I'm suddenly moved. I'm not sure why. And as I made these realizations, all of my annoyance at her dissolved ... immediately. Never to return again, actually. I was so far removed from being all righteous and annoyed that it was like I was a different person. My birthday was that week, and I was having a huge party at a club in New York. Dear friends, family members, etc. And impulsively - without stopping to examine it - I called her - using the number on the class roster I had in my address book. She answered. When she heard it was me, she did this big "oh my god I can't believe you're calling me" thing - which would have driven me up the freakin' wall a week before - but now, I felt kind towards her. And in being kind towards her, I was being kind to myself. Forgiving of myself. I know that "Oh my God I can't believe you're calling me" feeling. And I invited her and her husband to come to my party. She had three grade-school age kids - so I knew it would be a long-shot that she could come out on a weeknight - but she was so thrilled to be asked - it made me want to cry. I had been withholding something from her, something that was good and kind and soft ... and I was so rewarded when I let go. She basically just wanted to be my friend, for God's sake! She and her husband got a babysitter and came to my party, and they were totally awesome, and we all had the best time. She was terrific! We played ridiculous games. For example, someone had brought a pack of Bubblicious - you know, the kind that has a fortune in the wrapper. And we would do dramatic readings of the fortunes ... or turn them into songs ... we were acting like total retards, and laughing so hard we were crying. It was an awesome night. She and her husband had a BALL. It wasn't the "beginning of a beautiful friendship" - she eventually left that class, and I never saw her again ... but it was a real learning moment for me. The "power of facing unpleasant facts" - not focusing on what was wrong with her, but focusing on what was it in me that was having such a strong negative reaction to her?? And maybe I was a bit "off"? That I was "off" BECAUSE I had such a strong negative reaction to her!

I have strayed far from my topic, but that felt really good to write. And it is relevant, in its way. I have written before about my problem with those who "relish their rightness" and I hope I was clear in my post - that one of my biggest problems with those kinds of people is that it reveals to me my OWN "relishing" of my OWN rightness - and it's a button I don't want pushed ... and I have a hard enough time NOT relishing my rightness ... so I have to actively avoid such people. It's my choice. I do not set myself above or beyond them. It is that I am in process ... and I am trying to NOT be that way anymore. I can certainly go there, and it doesn't mean not having strong opinions ... but there's a huge difference between having a strong opinion and relishing your own rightness. It's a line I walk, and those who do not question their own rightness, who are incapable of seeing that maybe THEY have a little bit of work to do ... I experience them as toxic. Actually toxic.

And so this is one of the main reasons why I find Orwell so, not just refreshing, but exhilarating. He shows me the way. He really does. Bless him!

Hitchens writes about this whole "facing unpleasant facts" thing:

A commissar who realizes that his five-year-plan is off-target and that the people detest him or laugh at him may be said, in a base manner, to be confronting an unpleasant fact. So, for that matter, may a priest with 'doubts'. The reaction of such people to unpleasant facts is rarely self-critical; they do not have the 'power of facing'. Their confrontation with the fact takes the form of evasion; the reaction to the unpleasant discovery is a redoubling of efforts to overcome the obvious. The 'unpleasant facts' that Orwell faced were usually the ones that put his own position or preference to the test.

And that's really the jist of it.

It's an interesting point. Stalinist tyranny required of the Party members to be "self-critical" - meaning: to examine their own thought processes and admit where they were "incorrect". Self-criticisms. But we can see how bogus that really is - that what that brand of "self-criticism" represents is a whittling away of independent thought. And not just independent thought but man's ability to know that he even does think independently. Mikhail Bulgakov has some amazing scenes in The Master and Margarita - where someone realizes, through coercion, double-think, double-speak, and intense psychological pressure, that what they REALLY saw (a huge black cat riding the streetcar, holding onto the rails as though he was a human being) was NOT what they really saw ... they were mistaken. Even though, in their hearts, they KNOW what they saw. (An excerpt from that great book illustrating this point here.) Stalinism required human beings to split themselves. And so with all the damage Stalin wrought - the aftermath of which we still live in today - the psychological damage was the most shattering.

And that's what Orwell addresses so brilliantly in 1984. I have so many favorite sections of this book - but I figured I'd go with the "newspeak" section because it is so chilling. (And highly relevant still.)

Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz (my post about him here) who grew up in Poland - suffering under the Nazis and then under increasingly Stalinist Communism, wrote this about 1984 in 1953:

A few have become acquainted with Orwell's 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life.

What a compliment.

EXCERPT FROM 1984, by George Orwell.

"How is the dictionary getting on?" said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

"Slowly," said Syme. "I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating."

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

"The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition," he said. "We're getting the language into its final shape - the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050."

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good', what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words - in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course," he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

"You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston," he said almost sadly. "Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useful shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?"

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled sympathetically, he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-colored bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak," he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. "Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050-, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?"

"Except --" began Winston doubtfully, and then stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say "Except the proles," but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

"The proles are not human beings," he said carelessly. "By 2050 - earlier, probably - all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like 'freedom is slavery' when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

The Books: "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" (George Orwell)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story , by George Orwell.

Nothing like starting off the weekend with a little Orwell. And I am of the mind that we should never forget why Orwell matters ... to borrow a phrase. (That's a wonderful book, by the way. We actually just brought it up yesterday in a conversation over at Jonathan's place. It's one of my favorite kind of blog conversations: it starts out at one place, someone brings something else up, a couple respond to that point, someone chimes in on the original point ... and how did we get from Armond White to Orwell? Who knows. But it's awesome.

Do they still have kids read Animal Farm in 8th grade? That's when I read it first. It's simply told, and if you don't get the allegory - which I probably didn't as an 8th grader - it doesn't really matter - because the story is clear, and tyranny is a concept that at least can be comprehended by an 8th grader. The Iran hostage situation was one of the formative events of my early adolescence - that and the hunger strikes in Belfast (well, and of course the miracle on ice too ... which seemed to encapsulate the entire WORLD at that time) - The hostages and the hunger strikes were the first couple of times that I was really aware of the news as something I could understand and was invested in. I prayed for the hostages. And I prayed for Bobby Sands. I know it sounds stupid, but I did. We were actually in Ireland while the hunger strikes were going on - so it made it even more palpable to me. It made it real. So in junior high I was beginning to understand that much of reality basically sucks for most of the people on the planet, and things happened that were unfair and totally not cool. A sort of elementary revelation to make - but whatever, I was 11. So I'm not saying I read Animal Farm and thought of the Ayatollah Khomeini - I didn't - but my understanding of world events was such that I do remember reading the book and knowing that "the fairy story" part of the title was extremely cynical ... this was no "fairy story" I had ever heard. Animal Farm is SCARY and I knew enough to be scared of it when I read it the first time.

I re-read the book in 2000 ... for the first time since I was an adolescent. This is different from Orwell's other book 1984 which we had to read in 11th grade - and it immediately hooked me in - it was one of those books I had to read that I loved immediately - like The Catcher in the Rye, A Tale of Two Cities (excerpt here), The Great Gatsby (excerpt here). Some of the books we were forced to read (Tess of the D'Urbervilles (excerpt here), Moby-Dick (excerpt here) I hated and saw the reading list as a kind of purgatory. But there were gems that got through - and 1984 was one of them. Also, the book was called 1984 and I read it in 1984 - so there was this whole creepy aspect to it - but also, I remember feeling relieved, like, "Well, Orwell was wrong - we've still got a COUPLE years to go before we have THAT kind of society ..." My American girl response. Because of course that society existed in many nations across the world at that time ... but it didn't exist in MY world, and it was 1984! Phew! Dodged a bullet!

Animal Farm languished on my shelves, however, for decades before I picked it up again. By 2000 I was already into my obsession with Stalin - and so a whole other level of the book revealed itself to me. It almost didn't read as allegory anymore - it almost just felt like journalism. Ha. I know that Trotsky was not, in actuality, a pig like Wilbur ... but all of the events of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath are laid out in no uncertain terms in Animal Farm. It's A to B. The overturning of the old guard. The looting of the farm (like the Bolsheviks looting the Winter Palace). The manifesto released. The intellectual insistence on accuracy of thought. No, you can't think THIS way anymore ... THIS is the correct way to think ... The workings of the farm - and how to pick up where the humans left off. And naturally, there is great waste. The cows are milked by the pigs - and the milk lies in the bucket, and is not distributed and then later when someone goes to get the milk - it's gone, it's been pilfered. Total anarchy.

The system doesn't work at first. And so by sheer force of will Napoleon and Snowball - the two main pigs - begin to re-educate all of the animals. If it doesn't fit with reality, then let's just change the words we say. For example, they come out with commandments at the beginning of the revolution - one of the commandments is: No animal shall sleep in a bed. Later in the book, when the pigs take over the farmhouse - naturally they want to sleep in the beds. But ... oops ... the manifesto - that THEY WROTE - says that No animal shall sleep in a bed. So how to deal with the PAST when it doesn't align with the present? Well, you just change the past then, and you convince everyone that your version of the past is the correct one. "No, no, the commandment said that No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets." A couple of the animals know that that was not really what was said ... but eventually it is agreed upon that it is okay to sleep in a bed as long as it doesn't have sheets.

So there's that kind of obliteration of the past - one of the main weapons in tyranny's arsenal. If you can dominate the past, if you can convince a large group of people to accept your version of the past (and even if they don't accept it - they are afraid to say so) - then you win. You are the alpha dog. Then of course there is Snowball's disappearance - and how he takes on mythical aspects to those left behind. Everything that goes wrong on the farm is blamed on Snowball. A convenient scapegoat, like Trotsky was. If things don't work then Snowball is to blame! He's a saboteur! How convenient, isn't it ... it's almost like it was scripted. If Trotsky hadn't existed, they would have had to invent him. And, essentially, they did. He was a real man, but he was re-invented as Enemy Number One, an omnipresent source of mischief and disaster ... trains crashed. Trotsky was behind it. Not enough grain. Trotsky sabotaged the harvest (even though he wasn't even in Russia at the time. He pulled the strings from abroad). In a way, without Trotsky - it is debatable how successful all of this would have been, at least in terms of dominating and terrorizing the population at large. They NEEDED him. Because for the first 10 years after the Revolution, all hell broke loose. Millions of people died. Millions upon millions. Famine, terror, gulags, exile -

And this is something I've said time and time again in response to those who want to excuse all of this (these are the same people who would NEVER excuse Hitler's actions) because they like the idea of Socialism and so they take the stance of "It was a good idea and who knows what would have happened if Stalin hadn't messed it all up!" (Then, of course, there were those in the West who loved Stalin and were swayed by him - Stalin called them "the useful idiots" - the Beatrice and Stanley Webbs of the world ... bought the lie. Funny thing - in the "witness" sections of the movie Reds, Rebecca West, in her big googly-eyed glasses, said, "You know who was an idiot? Beatrice Webb. She didn't know a thing." Ha! Go, Dame Rebecca!). But to the "it was a good idea messed up by Stalin" folks, I say: No. It's not that it was good idea messed up by Stalin. It was that it was a bad idea in the first place. And actually, I'm not even convinced that there were any "ideas" going on at all in the Russian Revolution - that all of that talk and theory wasn't just a smokescreen for a giant power grab. And Stalin won. That was always the point. (I am thinking now of the "secret book" in 1984 which basically admits that "secret": that it was never about equality, or workers paradise ... it was always about creating an atomized society where one man ruled supreme) You can only think that it was all a good idea if you believe that man himself can change his spots - that he can obliterate his own greed and selfishness. I happen to not believe this. And so I don't think any of that stuff is a good idea, because it doesn't factor in, you know, human nature - which has been in evidence since Eve ate the apple and Cain killed his brother for a totally asinine reason. People are selfish, curious, mischievous, and self-involved. This is and always shall be. (This is my beef, too, with the people who use nostalgia as a political weapon. The people who seem to believe that there was a Golden Age in the past - when everything was BETTER. Yeah, it was better if you were a white straight middle-class male - of course it was ... come on, peeps! Get a grip! Learn your history! There is no mythical perfect past. Maybe things were simpler - yes - but "simpler" often means that much of the ugliness and prejudice and unfairness which does exist was actively repressed. The definitions were "simpler" and sure that might have been comforting - but only if you were in the dominant group. And so no, I am not down with saying that such a time was BETTER. Sorry. You can count me out of your delusion. Thanks. I know this is a post full of links to my own blog but whatever, that is just evidence that I am self-involved and all is right with the world ... It occurs to me that I wrote a bit on this whole "nostalgia" question in my two competing movie reviews: of Pleasantville and Blast From the Past - the two sides of nostalgia, which is not, in and of itself a bad thing - it is when one group wants THEIR version of nostalgia to dominate: OUR version of the good-ness in the past is what everyone should accept! ) So you can blather about "wouldn't it be great if ..." all you want ... it still doesn't change the fact that there is going to be some MORON in your utopia who says, "I don't WANT my house to look like everyone else's ... I want it to be a little bit taller." A benign example, but that's the start of it. (Stephen King shows this in The Stand - excerpt here - with the "new society" created in Colorado ... but ... but ... not everybody cooperates with the rules ... not everybody is on board with the utopia ... and so what is to be done with THOSE folks? Brilliant.)

In the excerpt below, poor little Mollie - the mare - shows us that problem with the mindset, when applied to individuals. She is mainly concerned with the fact that there might be no sugar after the Revolution, and she also doesn't want to have to give up her pretty ribbons in her mane. I mean, she is painted as a ridiculous individual - they're trying to talk about upheaval and social change, and she worries about her sweet tooth. BUT THAT'S THE THING. That's human nature. If you can somehow create a human race who will never say, "But I like sugar - I want to have sugar as a treat every day ..." ... then maybe you can have your perfect society. You can count me out of it, though ... because I'm with Mollie. There are things I WANT, that have nothing to do with the "greater good" ... they are my interests, my individuality expressing itself. Yes, we clump up into packs - human beings are wired that way ... but the individual cannot be crushed. Greed, or ... just the experience of wanting more ... seems to be wired into us. Lots of people just don't LIKE that about the human race and say stuff like, "Wouldn't it be great if people were just satisfied with what they had and didn't want more?" Yeah, well, I think it would be great if I could have a pet centaur - and I would take him on walks past Alexander Hamilton's bust ... and then I would leap on his back and we could fly over the Manhattan skyline singing "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay" ... but I know that I can't. I don't waste too much time being sad about the fact that centaurs don't exist, and therefore I can't "have" one - because if I did - I think I would have a problem with, you know, reality. And reality is tough enough for me to accept and deal with ... without adding my own fantasy disappointments on top of it. Regardless, this is my view, and it's very hard for some to admit that - people who devoted their lives to defending the Soviet Union - at all costs ... because they believed in the idea. And you can turn yourself inside out, saying: that it was a bastardization of true socialism (which obviously is the case - just talking in terms of the stated ideas now - Orwell makes that point in Animal Farm, with the sort of give and take the animals have with the truth and with their original goals).

In the tyranny of Stalin, what eventually became clear (and Robert Conquest makes the point again and again in his books on Stalin, that the men surrounding Stalin - while brutes and murderers themselves - were not as beyond the pale as Stalin, in terms of conventional morality ... Conquest says, like a refrain: "They didn't understand Stalin yet"), was that the point was not to bring about Socialism. The point, for Stalin, was to never relax the terror ... or, perhaps he would allow it to relax for a couple of years, after big purges - but that would only be a lull, to make people lower their guards - so that he could then re-assert the terror. This kept people on edge. Psychologically, it was devastating. After everyone was dead, all of his comrades, the only guys left around him were the toadies, the sycophantic imbeciles, illiterates - who were brutal enough to do what was necessary and not question why. Kirov is a prime example of one of the higher-ups in the Party who had an independent mind. He and Stalin were good friends and they went way back. But Kirov headed up the Party apparatus in St. Petersburg and Stalin became convinced that it was a kind of fifth column ... and Kirov ... Kirov began to haunt Stalin, haunt his every thought. Kirov was a big deal. A big wig. But he must be made to disappear. And he was. To quote Robert Conquest (from his great book The Great Terror):

This killing [the murder of Kirov] has every right to be called the crime of the century. Over the next four years, hundreds of Soviet citizens, including the most prominent political leaders of the Revolution, were shot for direct responsibility for the assassination, and literally millions of others went to their deaths for complicity in one or another part of the vast conspiracy which allegedly lay behind it. Kirov's death, in fact, was the keystone of the entire edifice of terror and suffering by which Stalin secured his grip on the Soviet peoples.

This is the crazy-making world portrayed in Animal Farm. Orwell is brutal, with no sentimentality. He goes for the jugular. If you go back, back to the world of the 1930s ... the comfortable political labels that we throw around have no meaning. Orwell was a Communist, he fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side - he despised imperialism (his experience as a policeman in Burma, under the flag of the British Empire, convinced him of imperialims being a grave sin against humanity) - he believed in freedom of speech, in the artist being able to say what he wanted to say. He believed in democracy. He felt that democracy was the only way to ensure liberty. His word for his beliefs were "Democratic Socialism". Again, there are folks out there today who have such a biased view of the word "Socialism" that they are unable to see the more complex historical realities at work - in the hot and chaotic decade of the 1930s. They write it off. They say stupid things. They are hardened in their understanding of the labels. Things would morph - yet again - after World War II - with the descent of the "Iron Curtain" - but in the 1930s, all of this was up for grabs. It was philosophical in nature - and yet there were those (like Orwell) who were fighting for their "side". Partisans, yes. But Orwell broke with the pack with his anti-Stalinism - Stalin went against everything he believed in, everything he had worked his life for ... If turning a blind eye to Stalin was required of the "Left" (and again, that word has been so changed in its meaning as to be nearly unrecognizable - especially when said by retards like Sean Hannity) ... then Orwell would have no part of it. There were many many awesome writers and thinkers who were in the same boat. Arthur Koestler. Rebecca West. These are giants of the 20th century. Orwell, because of 1984 ... well, it's stupid, but there's a feeling out there that Orwell's book was an endorsement of that kind of tyranny. I mean, people who think such things are nuts, as far as I'm concerned - did they even read the book?? But Orwell is a tough case, man - he's elusive. If you think you have him pinned down, you are wrong. So people get up in arms about him. They love him for his Socialism but then feel betrayed by his anti-Stalinism. They love him for his love of democracy, but then can't stand that he was a Communist. Whatever ... he is indicative of the upheavals of the 1930s, in general.

Here's an excerpt from early on in Animal Farm, a nice little fairy story of the tyranny of the 20th century.

I prefer 1984 to Animal Farm - I think it's a deeper book, more haunting, more of a clearer warning ... it leaves the specific spectre of Stalinism behind (which Animal Farm describes very literally - there is no question of who all the main characters are supposed to be- they each have their correlation in the Russian Revolution story) ... but 1984 goes for a more universal story, and therefore more terrifying. I'm a big Orwell fan. A couple years ago I read a collection of his essays - which range from memories of boarding school life, his time in Burma, a fantastic in-depth 50 page analysis of Charles Dickens (not to be missed!), and his possibly most famous essay about politics and the English language - an eclectic collection. I love the essays.

EXCERPT FROM Animal Farm: A Fairy Story , by George Orwell.

Three nights later old Major died peacefully in his sleep. His body was buried at the foot of the orchard.

This was early in March. During the next three months there was much secret activity. Major's speech had given to the more intelligent animals on the farm a completely new outlook on life. They did not know when the Rebellion predicted by Major would take place, they had no reason for thinking that it would be within their own lifetime, but they saw clearly that it was their duty to prepare for it. The work of teaching and organising the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally recognised as being the cleverest of the animals. Pre-eminent among the pigs were two young boars named Snowball and Napoleon, whom Mr. Jones was breeding up for sale. Napoleon was a large, rather fierce-looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way. Snowball was a more vivacious pig than Napoleon, quicker in speech and more inventive, but was not considered to have the same depth of character. All the other male pigs on the farm were porkers. The best known among them was a small fat pig named Squealer, with very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements, and a shrill voice. He was a brilliant talker, and when he was arguing some difficult point he had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive. The others said of Squealer that he could turn black into white.

These three had elaborated old Major's teachings into a complete system of thought, to which they gave the name of Animalism. Several nights a week, after Mr. Jones was asleep, they held secret meetings in the barn and expounded the principles of Animalism to the others. At the beginning they met with much stupidity and apathy. Some of the animals talked of the duty of loyalty to Mr. Jones, whom they referred to as "Master," or made elementary remarks such as "Mr. Jones feeds us. If he were gone, we would starve to death." Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead?" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?", and the pigs had great difficulty in making them see that this was contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The stupidest questions of all were asked by Mollie, the white mare. The very first question she asked Snowball was: "Will there still be sugar after the Rebellion?"

"No," said Snowball firmly. "We have no means of making sugar on this farm. Besides, you do not need sugar. You will have all the oats and hay you want."

"And shall I still be allowed to wear ribbons in my mane?" asked Mollie.

"Comrade," said Snowball, "those ribbons that you are so devoted to are the badge of slavery. Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?"

Mollie agreed, but she did not sound very convinced.

The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones' especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place.

Their most faithful disciples were the two carthorses, Boxer and Clover. These two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having one accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments. They were unfailing in their attendance at the secret meetings in the barn, and led the singing of Beasts of England, with which the meetings always ended.

Now, as it turned out, the Rebellion was achieved much earlier and more easily than anyone had expected. In past years Mr. Jones, although a hard master, had been a capable farmer, but of late he had fallen on evil days. He had become much disheartened after losing money in a lawsuit, and had taken to drinking more than was good for him. For whole days at a time he would lounge in his Windsor chair in the kitchen, reading the newspapers, drinking, and occasionally feeding Moses on crusts of bread soaked in beer. His men were idle and dishonest, the fields were full of weeds, the buildings wanted roofing, the hedges were neglected, and the animals were underfed.

June came and the hay was almost ready for cutting. On Midsummer's Eve, which was a Saturday, Mr. Jones went into Willingdon and got so drunk at the Red Lion that he did not come back till midday on Sunday. The men had milked the cows in the early morning and then had gone out rabbiting, without bothering to feed the animals. When Mr. Jones got back he immediately went to sleep on the drawing-room sofa with the News of the World over his face, so that when evening came, the animals were still unfed. At last they could stand it no longer. One of the cows broke in the door of the store-shed with her horn and all the animals began to help themselves from the bins. It was just then that Mr. Jones woke up. The next moment he and his four men were in the store-shed with whips in their hands, lashing out in all directions. This was more than the hungry animals could bear. With one accord, though nothing of the kind had been planned beforehand, they flung themselves upon their tormentors. Jones and his men suddenly found themselves being butted and kicked from all sides. The situation was quite out of their control. They had never seen animals behave like this before, and this sudden uprising of creatures whom they were used to thrashing and maltreating just as they chose, frightened them almost out of their wits. After only a moment or two they gave up trying to defend themselves and took to their heels. A minute later all five of them were in full flight down the cart-track that led to the main road, with the animals pursuing them in triumph.

Mrs. Jones looked out of the bedroom window, saw what was happening, hurriedly flung a few possessions into a carpet bag, and slipped out of the farm by another way. Moses sprang off his perch and flapped after her, croaking loudly. Meanwhile the animals had chased Jones and his men out on to the road and slammed the five-barred gate behind them. And so, almost before they knew what was happening, the Rebellion had been successfully carried through: Jones was expelled, and the Manor Farm was theirs.

"I Told You So, You Fucking Fools"

or ... that's what Robert Conquest reportedly wanted to call the new edition of his book The Great Terror when it came out with updated information - information which basically not only vindicated Conquest (who had been pilloried for years), but MORE than proved his case. In almost every situation, he had actually underestimated the number of millions killed by Stalin. Here's one of my posts on The Great Terror (and an excerpt from the book) - it's one of the most important books of the 20th century. And man, can that dude write!! He's a poet, too. Seriously, Robert Conquest is one of my intellectual idols.

Anyway, here's a lengthy awesome piece in The New Criterion about The Great Terror - great stuff.

I would totally pick up a book called I Told You So, You Fucking Fools.

Here's all my stuff on Stalin, for those of you so inclined.

The Books: "Darkness at Noon" (Arthur Koestler)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Darkness at Noon is one of the most important books of the 20th century. I came to it late - and it was basically Emily who BEGGED me to read it. I don't know how I missed it, but that's neither here nor there. The book is, as the New Statesman aptly described it: "One of the few books written in this epoch which will survive it." Read it alongside Master and Margarita (post here). Follow it up with 1984. And keep The Gulag Archipelago (post here) and The Great Terror (post here) nearby, to cross-reference. That's its status, its importance. I would even argue that it would be difficult to understand the convulsions of the 20th century without reading this book. You want to understand a totalitarian society? You want to understand how the "show trials" in the USSR under Stalin's reign really worked? Well, you need to read Gulag Archipelago, you need to read The Great Terror - but you also need to read Darkness at Noon. It's an extraordinary document, a record not just of WHAT they did, but even more importantly, how. One of the reasons the West was so summarily duped in the 1930s by the show trials of big-wigs like Zinoviev and Kamenev, is that it is difficult to understand how such a thing could come to be. Why would these guys confess? If they were "innocent"? It makes no sense. And the parade of confessors in the block, excoriating themselves relentlessly for "incorrect" thinking and "sabotage" - it was quite convincing. In this case, of course, what you saw is NOT what you got. It was a performance. The verdicts drawn up beforehand - then it was just a matter of getting these people to confess. Now by the 30s, of course - there really weren't any more real enemies of the state. Stalin had taken care of that. So the people in the block were not "victims" - they were the stars of the revolution, the big-wigs who had made it all happen. It must have been fantastic! I don't mean that word like "great", I mean it like: beyond belief. The stories of those show trials (detailed step by step in Robert Conquest's great The Great Terror) are unreal. UNREAL. Darkness at Noon is about one of those show trials. Rubashov is an old revolutionary - maybe like a Bukharin type. He devoted his life to the party. And now the party is turning in on its own. He is jailed. The book details the series of interrogations he goes through, psychological torture and pressure ... and how disorienting that kind of thing is. You begin to doubt yourself. What is true? Am I guilty? Did I sabotage? Even just in my thoughts?? And this is how "the party' gets you, in the end. By getting inside your head. There IS no innocence inside your head. If you ever had even the slightest thought that things weren't going well, that maybe things should change ... then that constitutes guilt in such a society. Correctness must go down into your bone marrow. It is the party's way or no way. ("He loved Big Brother.") Bulgakov is so so brilliant about this in Master and Margarita (excerpt here). It's hard to picture HOW that happens if you have never been pressured to such a degree, or if you live in a society that is free - where all different sides can be heard. The disorientation of living in a one-party state doesn't just limit what men and women can DO, it has as its goal a limit on what you are allowed to THINK. And to a huge degree, it succeeded. It's thought control they are after. George Orwell really goes after that, with the whole "newspeak" thing ... how language is distorted, blunted. When you control what can be said, you can control what people think. It's that fucking simple.

Arthur Koestler was a really interesting guy. Born in Hungary, emigrated to England, was a devoted Communist - as were many folks in those days. At the time, the Communists were on the front-lines against Fascism (never mind that their results ended up being the same - that's another conversation - I'm talking about the early 30s - you have to get in the perspective of that time, and not do your "we know the end" judgment of this, because that's stupid, frankly.) Koestler, though, began to see the "great terror" happening in Russia - and it caused him to, famously, break with the Communist Party. Darkness at Noon is his book, basically, about WHY. It is a brave book. It was an unpopular statement at that time, where most intellectuals were apologists for Stalin, because they still believed in the Socialist dream. The roll-call of names of authors who saw what was really going on and then wrote about it - and were, consequently, pilloried - is long. And illustrious. Orwell. Robert Conquest. These people were not fooled by the show trials. They 'saw' - even though there was no information at the time. The full archives of the Politburo were not available until the early 1990s. Conquest realized, when he got to take a look at the archives finally, that he had underestimated the extent of the terror. Of course. Here's some interesting biographical information on Koestler. Fascinating guy. Here's the post I wrote after I finished the book. I read it in 2 days. Could not put it down. It's terrible. Terrible. One of the most enraging books I have ever read. And the scary thing is: it works on the reader in the same way that it works on Rubashov, our hero. You begin to doubt ... that what you know is true. You start to ask yourself: could I withstand that pressure? Could I tie myself in knots to justify my actions intellectually (which was what "the party" was all about)? What is true? How can we really know?

Here's an excerpt. Rubashov is being interrogated by Ivanov. The interrogation goes on for the entire book; it has different stages - but, essentially it's the same conversation. The point is to grind Rubashov down to powder. That is what totalitarian societies do. It is, in the end, their main goal. Oh, and Stalin is never named, although he is omnipresent. He is referred to as "No. 1".

Darkness at Noon is a must-read. In it lies the entire 20th century.

EXCERPT FROM Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Ivanov paused and poured himself another glass of brandy. Rubashov walked up and down in front of the window. After a while he said:

"Why did you execute Bogrov?"

"Why? Because of the submarine question," said Ivanov. "It concerned the problem of tonnage - an old quarrel, the beginnings of which must be familiar to you.

"Bogrov advocated the construction of submarines of large tonnage and a long range of action. The Party is in favour of small submarines with a short range. You can build three times as many small submarines for your money as big ones. Both parties had valid technical arguments. The experts made a big display of technical sketches and algebraic formulae; but the actual problem lay in quite a different sphere. Big submarines mean: a policy of aggression, to further world revolution. Small submarines mean: coastal defense - that is, self-defense and postponement of world revolution. The latter is the point of view of No. 1, and the Party.

"Bogrov had a strong following in the Admiralty and amongst the officers of the old guard. It would not have been enough to put him out of the way; he also had to be discredited. A trial was projected to unmask the partisans of big tonnage as saboteurs and traitors. We had already brought several little engineers to the point of being willing to confess publicly to whatever we liked. But Bogrov wouldn't play the game. He declaimed up to the very end of big tonnage and world revolution. He was two decades behind the times. He would not understand that the times are against us, that Europe is passing a wave and must wait until we are lifted by the next. In a public trial he would only have created confusion amongst the people. There was no other way possible than to liquidate him administratively. Would not you have done the same thing in our position?"

Rubashov did not answer. He stopped walking, and again remained leaning against the wall of No. 406, next to the bucket. A cloud of sickening stench rose from it. He took off his pince-nez and looked at Ivanov out of red-rimmed hunted eyes.

"You did not hear him whimpering," he said.

Ivanov lit a new cigarette on the stump of the old one; he too found the stench of the bucket rather overpowering.

"No," he said. "I did not hear it. But I have heard and seen similar things. What of it?"

Rubashov was silent. It was no use to try and explain it. The whimpering and the muffled drumming again penetrated his ears, like an echo. One could not express that. Nor the curve of Arlova's breast with its warm, steep point. One could express nothing. "Die in silence," had been written on the message given him by the barber.

"What of it?" repeated Ivanov. He stretched out his leg and waited. As no answer came, he went on speaking:

"If I had a spark of pity for you," he said, "I would now leave you alone. But I have not a spark of pity. I drink; for a time, as you know, I drugged myself; but the vice of pity I have up till now managed to avoid. The smallest dose of it, and you are lost. Weeping over humanity and bewailing oneself - you know our race's pathological leaning to it. Our greatest poets destroyed themselves by this poison. Up to forty, fifty, they were revolutionaries - then they became consumed by pity and the world pronounced them holy. You appear to have the same ambition, and to believe it to be an individual process, personal to you, something unprecedented ..." He spoke rather louder and puffed out a cloud of smoke. "Beware of these ecstasies," he said: "Every bottle of spirits contains a measurable amount of ecstasy. Unfortunately, only few people, particularly amongst our fellow countrymen, ever realize that the ecstasies of humility and suffering are as cheap as those induced chemically. The time when I woke from the anesthetic, and found that my body stopped at the left knee, I also experienced a kind of absolute ecstasy of unhappiness. Do you remember the lectures you gave me at the time?" He poured out another glass and emptied it.

"My point is this," he said; "one may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. That is the first commandment for us. Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance, and atonement are for us repellent debauchery. To sit down and let oneself be hypnotized by one's own navel, to turn up one's eyes and humbly offer the back of one's neck to Gletkin's revolver - that is an easy solution. The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most great revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton to Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one's own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears ..."

He felt for the bottle behind him and poured out another glass. Rubashov noticed that the bottle was already half empty. You also could do with a little solace, he thought.

"The greatest criminals in history," Ivanov went on, "are not of the type Nero and Fouche, but of the type Gandhi and Tolstoy. Gandhi's inner voice has done more to prevent the liberation of India than the British guns. To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one's own conscience is to abandon mankind. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience. To want to conduct history according to the maxims of the Sunday school means to leave everything as it is. You know that as well as I do. You know the stakes in this game, and here you come talking about Bogrov's whimpering ..."

He emptied his glass and added:

"Or with conscience pricks because of your fat Arlova."

Rubashov knew from before that Ivanov could hold a lot; one did not notice any change in his behaviour, beyond a slightly more emphatic way of speaking than usual. You do need consolation, thought Rubashov again, perhaps more than I do. He sat down on the narrow stool opposite Ivanov and listened. All this was not new to him; he had defended the same point of view for years, with the same or similar words. The difference was that at that time he had known those inner processes of which Ivanov spoke so contemptuously, merely as an abstraction; but since then he had experienced the "grammatical fiction" as a physical reality in his own body. But had these irrational processes become more admissible merely because he had a personal acquaintance with them now? Was it any the less necessary to fight the "mystical intoxication" merely because one had oneself become intoxicated by it? When a year ago he had sent Arlova to her death, he had not had enough imagination to picture the details of an execution. Would he now behave differently merely because he now knew some of its aspects? Either it was right - or it was wrong to sacrifice Richard, Arlova and Little Loewy. But what had Richard's stutter, the shape of Arlova's breast or Bogrov's whimpering to do with the objective rightness or wrongness of the measure itself?

Rubashov began again to walk up and down his cell. He felt that everything he had experienced since his imprisonment had been only a prelude; that his cogitations had led him to a dead end - on to the threshold of what Ivanov called the "metaphysical brothel" - and that he must begin again from the beginning. But how much time was there left? He stopped, took the glass out of Ivanov's hand and drained it. Ivanov watched him.

"That's better," he said with a fleeting smile. "Monologues in the form of a dialogue are a useful institution. I hope I reproduced the voice of the tempter effectively. A pity that the opposite party is not represented. But that is part of its tricks, that it never lets itself be drawn into a rational discussion. It always attacks a man in defenseless moments, when he is alone an din some effective mise en scene: from burning thorn-bushes or cloud-covered mountain tops - and with a special preference for a sleeping victim. The methods of the great moralist are pretty unfair and theatrical ..."

Rubashov was no longer listening. Walking up and down, he was wondering whether to-day, if Arlova was still alive he would sacrifice her again. This problem fascinated him; it seemed to contain the answer to all other questions ... He stopped in front of Ivanov and asked him:

"Do you remember 'Raskolnikov'?"

Ivanov smiled at him with irony. "It was to be expected that you would sooner or later come to that. Crime and Punishment ... You are really becoming childish or senile ..."

"Wait a bit. Wait a bit," said Rubashov, walking up and down agitatedly. "All this is just talk, but now we are getting nearer the point. As far as I remember, the problem is, whether the student Raskolnikov has the right to kill the old woman? He is young and talented; he has as it were an unredeemed pledge on life in his pocket; she is old and utterly useless to the world. But the equation does not stand. In the first place, circumstances oblige him to murder a second person; that is the unforeseeable and illogical consequence of an apparently simple and logical action. Secondly, the equation collapses in any case, because Raskolnikov discovers that twice two are not four when the mathematical units are human beings ..."

"Really," said Ivanov. "If you want to hear my opinion, every copy of the book should be burnt. Consider a moment what this humanitarian fog-philosophy would lead to, if we were to take it literally; if we were to stick to the precept that the individual is sacrosanct, and that we must not treat human lives according to the rules of arithmetic. That would mean that a battalion commander may not sacrifice a patrolling party to save the regiment. That we may not sacrifice fools like Bogrov, and must risk our coastal towns being shot to pieces in a couple of years ..."

Rubashov shook his head:

"Your examples are all drawn from war - that is, from abnormal circumstances."

"Since the invention of the steam engine," replied Ivanov, "the world has been permanently in an abnormal state; the wars and revolutions are just the visible expressions of this state. Your Raskolnikov is, however, a fool and a criminal; not because he behaves logically in killing the old woman, but because he is doing it in his personal interest. The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains only the rule of political ethics; anything else is just vague chatter and melts away between one's fingers... If Raskolnikov had bumped off the old woman at the command of the Party - for example, to increase strike funds or to instal an illegal Press - then the equation would stand, and the novel with its misleading problem would never have been written, and so much the better for humanity."

Rubashov did not answer. He was still fascinated by the problem as to whether to-day, after the experiences of the last few months and days, he would again send Arlova to her death. He did not know. Logically, Ivanov was right in everything he said; the invisible opponent was silent, and only indicated its existence by a dull feeling of uneasiness. And in that, too, Ivanov was right, that this behaviour of the "invisible opponent", in never exposing itself to argument and only attacking people in defenceless moments, showed it in a very dubious light ...

"I don't approve of mixing ideologies," Ivanov continued. "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community - which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions in practice, it is impossible. Whoever is burdened with power and responsibility finds out on the first occasion that he has to choose; and he is fatally driven to the second alternative. Do you know, since the establishment of Christianity as a state religion, a single example of a state which really followed a Christian policy? You can't point out one. In times of need - and politics are chronically in a time of need - the rulers were always able to evoke 'exceptional circumstances', which demanded exceptional measures of defence. Since the existence of nations and classes, they live in a permanent state of mutual self-defence, which forces them to defer to another time the putting into practice of humanism ..."

Rubashov looked through the window. The melted snow had again frozen and sparkled, an irregular surface of yellow-white crystals. The sentinel on the wall marched up and down with shouldered rifle. The sky was clear but moonless; above the machine-gun turret shimmered the Milky Way.

Rubashov shrugged his shoulders. "Admit," he said, "that humanism and politics, respect for the individual and social progress, are incompatible. Admit that Gandhi is a catastrophe for India; that chasteness in the choice of means leads to political impotence. In negatives we agree. But look where the other alternative has led us ..."

"Well," asked Ivanov. "Where?"

Rubashov rubbed his pince-nez on his sleeve, and looked at him shortsightedly. "What a mess," he said, "what a mess we have made of our golden age."

Special Ops goes to bed with Stalin

Last night Special Ops fell asleep holding her biography of Stalin open in her hand, with her pen poised over the page.

Special Ops woke up at 3 a.m. and found herself in this odd statue-esque pose, as though at any moment, even in her sleep, she might feel the need to write down some notes on the Mensheviks, or underline some great Robert Conquest sentence to add to her Special Ops files ... and it's better to be always ready for such an emergency. Falling asleep while reading a novel, or a book of poetry is one thing. But falling asleep clutching a biography of Stalin is strictly Special Ops territory.

The Books: "The Master and Margarita" (Mikhail Bulgakov)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

The Master and Margarita - by Mikhail Bulgakov.

I finally read this great great novel last fall as part of a blog-reading challenge - I wrote a big thing about it here.

The book terrifies. The devil comes to Moscow in the 1930s. He is more of a shit-disturber than anything else. A practical joker. But what happens when the devil appears in a city that doesn't believe in God? Or the devil, for that matter? The book is, of course, an extended metaphor about life under Stalin - this book was not allowed to be published in Russia at the time. Bulgakov felt it was too dangerous to even have the manuscript lying around so he destroyed it ... and later re-created it from memory. Unbelievable.

The book opens with the devil appearing to two men (two writers) on a hot day in Moscow. Stalin's name is never mentioned, communism is never mentioned, socialism - but the sense of the ominous-ness of this culture is palpable. Who is this gentleman talking to them? Is he a foreigner? Pontius Pilate comes up (he's a very important theme throughout the book) ... and at the end of the third chapter a tragedy occurs. A tragedy with decidedly occult overtones. It seems that "devilry" is afoot - and also ... a huge black cat has been seen, walking on its hind legs (shiver - that freakin' cat) ... and now ... someone's head has been severed. Ivan - the poet - who witnesses all of this - tries to tell people what has happened. Naturally, he is not believed. He gets more and more frantic. Something is not right. Something evil has arrived in Moscow! He is finally put into a mental institution. That's the excerpt below. He is asked to write down everything that happened that day ... and watch what happens. The chapter is called "Ivan is Split In Two". If you remember the culture, and the year, and what was going on in Russia in the 30s ... this chapter takes on decidedly terrifying meaning. How people themselves must always be 'split in two' in a totalitarian society. What you see is NOT really what you see ... and you cannot EVER have an opinion on what you see .... you must keep your mouth shut ... even if you DO see a massive cat riding the streetcar ... Nope. You didn't really see that. You didn't really see that. In order to survive this .... one must split in two. Ivan was near hysteria when he was brought to the hospital. Things were urgent. The devil himself was loose! We must act quickly! Why won't anyone listen to me?? And slowly .... his attitude changes ...

This chapter scared me. There are times in life when confusion, hysteria, grappling with an issue openly - rather than coming to a concrete decision, emotion, response, reaction ... are appropriate and not to be feared. Certain people (and certain cultures) want to cut all that off. The ideal is an obedient populace. A populace who will swallow ANYthing, even the devil walking around a pond in a public park. And so anyone who says, "You know what? This isn't right!" is seen as a threat, or as just flat out stupid or crazy. The doctor comes in - and Ivan is hysterical - and rightly so ... but the doctor gives him a shot ... and says, as though this is the highest good - that "all will be forgotten".

You want to scream at Ivan - "No! Don't let them make you forget! Don't let them give you that shot! Remember! Remember!"

But the society as a whole has a vested interest in shutting Ivan and his loud-mouth down.

This chapter is phenomenal in describing that process. And watch ... watch how eventually Ivan has internalized the voices of others. This is the split. He begins to doubt himself. He begins to doubt that he saw what he really saw.

Once that happens - the culture has won. It has made him obedient.

The book is a masterpiece, one of the greatest books of the 20th century.

Excerpt from The Master and Margarita - by Mikhail Bulgakov.

The poet's attempts to compose a report on the terrible consultant had come to nothing. As soon as he received a pencil stub and some paper from the stout nurse, whose name was Praskovya Fyodorovna, he had rubbed his hands together in a businesslike fashion and hastily set to work at the bedside table. He had dashed off a smart beginning, "To the police. From Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny, member of MASSOLIT. Report. Yesterday evening I arrived at Petrarch's Ponds with the deceased Berlioz ..."

And the poet immediately became confused, largely due to the word "deceased". It made everything sound absurd from the start: how could he have arrived somewhere with the deceased? Dead men don't walk! They really will think I'm a madman!

Such thoughts made him start revising. The second version came out as follows, "... with Berlioz, later deceased ..." That didn't satisfy the author either. He had to write a third version, and that came out even worse than the other two, " ... with Berlioz, who fell under a streetcar ..." What was irksome here was the obscure composer who was Berlioz's namesake; he felt compelled to add, "... not the composer ..."

Tormented by these two Berliozes, Ivan crossed everything out and decided to begin with a strong opening that would immediately get the reader's attention. He began with a description of the cat boarding the streetcar, and then went back to the episode of the severed head. The head and the consultant's prediction made him think of Pontius Pilate, and in order to make the report more convincing, he decided to include the whole story about the procurator, starting with the moment when he came out onto the colonnade of Herod's palace dressed in a white robe with a blood-red lining.

Ivan worked hard, crossing out what he had written and adding new words. He even tried to do drawings of Pontius Pilate, and of the cat on its hind legs. But the drawings didn't help either, and the more the poet worked, the more confused and incomprehensible his report became.

By the time an ominous stormcloud with smoking edges had appeared from the distance and enveloped the woods, and the wind had blown the papers off the table, Ivan felt drained of energy and unable to cope with the report. Making no effort at all to pick up the scattered pages, he burst into silent and bitter tears.

The kind-hearted nurse, Praskovya Fyodorovna, came by to check on Ivan during the storm and was upset to see him crying. She closed the blinds so that the lightning would not frighten him, picked up the papers from the floor, and ran off with them to get the doctor.

The doctor appeared, gave Ivan an injection in his arm and assured him that he would stop crying, that now everything would pass, everything would change and all would be forgotten.

The doctor turned out to be right. The wood across the river started to look as it had before. It stood out sharply, down to the last tree, beneath the sky which had been restored to its former perfect blueness, and the river grew calm. Ivan's anguish began to diminish right after the injection, and now the poet lay peacefully, gazing at the rainbow spread across the sky.

Things stayed this way until evening, and he never even noticed when the rainbow evaporated, the sky faded and grew sad, and the world turned black.

Ivan drank some hot milk, lay down again, and was himself surprised at how his thoughts had changed. The image of the demonic, accursed cat had somehow softened in his memory, the severed head no longer frightened him, and when Ivan stopped thinking about the head, he began to reflect on how the clinic wasn't so bad, everything considered, and how Stravinsky was a clever fellow and a celebrity and extremely pleasant to have dealings with. And, besides, the evening air was sweet and fresh after the storm.

The asylum was falling asleep. The frosted white lights in the quiet corridors went out, and in accordance with regulations, the faint blue night-lights came on, and the cautious steps of the nurses were heard less frequently on the rubber matting in the corridor outside the door.

Now Ivan lay in a state of sweet lethargy, gazing now at the shaded lamp, which cast a mellow light down from the ceiling, now at the moon, which was emerging from the black wood. He was talking to himself.

"Why did I get so upset over Berlioz falling under a streetcar?" the poet reasoned. "In the final analysis, let him rot! What am I to him, anyway, kith or kin? If we examine the question properly, it turns out that I, esentially, didn't really know the deceased. What did I actually know about him? Nothing, except that he was bald and horribly eloquent. And so, citizen," continued Ivan, addressing an invisible audience, "let us examine the following: explain, if you will, why I got so furious at that mysterious consultant, magician, and professor with the black, vacant eye? What was the point of that whole absurd chase, with me in my underwear, carrying a candle? And what about that grotesque scene in the restaurant?"

"But, but, but ..." said the old Ivan to the new Ivan, addressing him in a stern voice from somewhere inside his head or behind his ear, "but didn't he know in advance that Berlioz's head would be cut off? How could you not get upset?"

"What is there to discuss, comrades!" retorted the new Ivan to the broken-down old Ivan. "Even a child can see that there is something sinister about all this. He is, no doubt about it, a mysterious and exceptional personality. But that's what makes it so interesting! The fellow was personally acquainted with Pontius Pilate, what could be more interesting than that? And instead of making that ridiculous scene at Petrarch's Ponds, wouldn't it have been better to have asked him politely about what happened next to Pilate and the prisoner Ha-Notsri? But instead, I got obsessed with the devil knows what! Is it such an earth-shattering event - that an editor got run over! Does it mean the magazie will have to close down? So, what can you do? Man is mortal and, as was said so fittingly, sometimes suddenly so. Well, God rest his soul! There'll be a new editor, and maybe he'll be even more eloquent than the last one."

After dozing off for awhile, the new Ivan asked the old Ivan spitefully, "So how do I look in all this?"

"Like a fool!" a bass voice pronounced distinctly, a voice which did not come from either one of the Ivans and was amazingly reminiscent of the consultant's bass.

For some reason Ivan did not take offense at the word "fool", but was pleasantly surprised by it, smiled, and fell into a half-sleep. Sleep was creeping up on Ivan, and he could already see a palm tree on an elephantlike trunk, and a cat went by - not a fearsome one, but a jolly one, and, in short, sleep was about to engulf him when suddenly the window grille moved aside noiselessly, and a mysterious figure, who was trying to hide from the moonlight, appeared on the balcony, and shook a warning finger at Ivan.

Not feeling the least bit afraid, Ivan raised himself in bed and saw that there was a man on the balcony. And this man pressed his finger to his lips and whispered, "Shh!"

Today in History: Dec. 1, 1934

Josef Stalin and Sergei Kirov

Since I'm reading this book right now - I'll finish it tonight - it's only 150 pages long, not even ... I thought it would be appropriate to note that Today in History, 1934 - Sergei Kirov was murdered. (More here.)

The murder was the excuse ... the excuse to launch the terror that would grip the country for a decade after until any opposition was either killed, imprisoned, or completely pacified. (The word "pacification" always gives me a chill - in this context.) Robert Conquest, in his introduction to this book, writes:

This century has seen horrible crimes on a mass scale, culminating in the Jewish Holocaust. No comparison with these can be sustained. But as an individual murder, there is, for various reasons, none to match the Kirov murder.

Single events - even accidental ones - have often turned the path of history. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, just over twenty years previously, brought on a perhaps otherwise avoidable Great War. At any rate, that is the only individual crime (or dual crime, since the Archduke's morganatic wife was also killed) with which the Kirov murder can remotely be compared. But even the assassination of the Archduke had no further intrinsic result beyond the crisis leading to war. There was no mystery about the responsibility. No long-lasting politicies were based on any theoretical view of it.

The Kirov murder, however, was made the central justification for the whole theory of Stalinism and the necessity for endless terror.

Of course - Conquest had first published most of his books before the Soviet Union had opened up, before perestroika, glasnost, and all the rest, and he had to pretty much guess at a lot of this stuff. The reports of the "trials", the credulous Western witnesses (Beatrice and Sidney Webb, for example - but there were many other useful idiots), the lack of any reliable documentation ... at least not available to us. Conquest's accomplishment is even that much more astonishing - since he was working almost blind.

As Conquest wrote many years later, in his Great Terror: A Reassessment:

This killing has every right to be called the crime of the century. Over the next four years, hundreds of Soviet citizens, including the most prominent political leaders of the Revolution, were shot for direct responsibility for the assassination, and literally millions of others went to their deaths for complicity in one or another part of the vast conspiracy which allegedly lay behind it. Kirov's death, in fact, was the keystone of the entire edifice of terror and suffering by which Stalin secured his grip on the Soviet peoples.

Chapter 1 of the book I am now reading is entitled "The Murder".

Here's an excerpt:

The Smolny, a handsome structure with a classical front of pillars and pediment, set in its own park facing eastward up the Neva, was where Kirov had his offices. Seventeen years earlier the former aristocratic girls' school had been the headquarters from which Lenin directed the seizure of power. Since the transfer of the capital to Moscow, it had been the center from which not only Leningrad city and province, but the whole Soviet Northwest, was controlled. Kirov's offices and those of other local leaders were on the third floor (i.e., the British second floor).

Kirov had returned on 29 November from a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow. The other Leningrad members of that Committee had accompanied him: in particular his number two, and most trusted colleague, the "shockheaded" Mikhail Chudov, Second Secretary of the Leningrad Provincial Committee of the Party; and his other "closest collaborators," as an official biography puts it, the "elegant" I.F. Kodatsky, head of the city's government as Chairman of its Executive Committee; P.A. Alekseyev, Chairman of the Leningrad Trade Unions; A.I. Ugarov, Secretary of the City Committee; P.I. Struppe, Chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee; and B.P. Pozern and P.I. Smorodin, Secretaries of the City Committee, Kirov, Chudov, Kodatsky, and Alekseyev were full members, and the others candidate members of the Central Committee.

They had already reported to the Leningrad Committees, and on the evening of 1 December the whole of the active membership - the aktiv - of the city's party were to assemble for a more public report at the Tavride Palace. Soon after 4 p.m. Kirov arrived at the Smolny to confer with Chudov and others on the text of the report. It was already dark and there was snow on the ground.

According to one official Soviet biography "his personal guard" had accompanied him in his car but did not follow him upstairs into the Smolny. This man, a veteran called Borisov, is described as devoted to Kirov. He had been detained by men of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), and is next heard of at Leningrad NKVD headquarters. He had two days to live.

Kirov went up to his office without him, perhaps not noticing that the usual guards on each floor were also absent.

All accounts agree that the assassin had entered the Smolny without difficulty, and gone up to the third floor. He had earlier worked there, and had a good knowledge of the building. He seems to have hidden in a lavatory, from which he watched the arrival of Kirov's car.

Kirov first conferred briefly with Chudov and others. There is some divergence even in official accounts, and more in others, about which room this meeting took place in, but this is of no great significance. In any case, it seems that he left Chudov's office, or more probably his own reception room, and walked along the corridor to his 'working office'. To reach it, he had to make a left turn, which allowed the assassin, emerging from his retreat, to shoot him in the back of the neck.

The next divergence in the accounts is of more significance. In most, only one shot is mentioned or assumed, but some speak of two shots, the second fired by the assassin in a suicide attempt, but missing him and hitting the ceiling. One report has a different explanation for this second shot.

In any case, the assassin fainted and fell beside his victim. Chudov and the others hurried out into the corridor. Kirov was carried bleeding and unconscious into his office and, when the doctors came, was given adrenalin, ether, camphor, and caffeine, but he soon died. The autopsy gives in great detail the path of the bullet and its effects. It was also established that a Nagan revolver was used, and that this was what was found near the assassin. Meanwhile, NKVD men arrested the unconscious killer, and Chudov telephoned the news to Moscow.

The murder was not done on impulse. The assassin had been preparing his act since the summer. But after various setbacks, his final written plan of the campaign is dated 1 November 1934, in the interrogation records.

It will be seen that there were already some suspicious circumstances. The mere fact of an assassin seeking to kill Kirov is easily enough understood (though his precise motives remained to be established). The question was, how did he get the opportunity? Why were the Smolny guards absent? Where was Kirov's own bodyguard?

Or, to put it another way, who gave him his chance, and why?

Photo of Kirov's funeral procession. Note the presence of Stalin behind the casket. Unbelievable.

In the first days when Leningrad was orphaned, Stalin rushed there. He went to the place where the crime against our country was committed. The enemy did not fire at Kirov personally. No! He fired at the proletarian revolution.

�Pravda, 5 December 1934

You know you are an irredeemable geek when ...

... you squeal with sincere delight when you open a package from a second-hand bookseller - to see that you have finally received the book you ordered: Stalin and the Kirov Murder, by Robert Conquest.

I squeal with delight over the Kirov murder.

Repeatedly.

Not the fact that it happened ... but the fact that I can never read enough about this one particular event. And here's a whole book about that one thing.

Squeeeee!

More of my ramblings about Kirov here (that was in response to beginning Conquest's book The Great Terror).

And ... here.

I've already been flipping through it. I can't start it just yet ... there are a couple books ahead of it on "the list" - but I am itching to just tear through it.

The Books: "The Great Terror: A Reassessment" (Robert Conquest)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is The Great Terror: A Reassessment, by Robert Conquest

One of the most important non-fiction books of the 20th century. It was first published in 1968 - and then was re-written by Conquest, a generation later, in order to add back-up documentation, and archival information which was now available to him (crackup of the USSR, perestroika and all that). He found confirmation that he had actually UNDER-estimated the level of Stalin's terror. Conquest's work is highly regarded in some circles and completely ignored in other circles. Certain circles still cling to the utopian dream of socialism, and Robert Conquest does not play well with others, in this regard. The Great Terror is a relentless book - there is almost nothing pleasant about the reading experience - He explains the mindset so well, I think. Because that's another thing that is so frightening: the whole thing makes SENSE. It's a horrific sense, it's a looking-glass-world sense - but once you get down to brass tacks, you can see that Stalin never made a move for nothing. He always knew what he was doing, and every move he made had some logic to it.

I wrote about my response to the book here. And here too.

Essential reading. (Not my posts about the book, obviously - but the book itself). Here's an excerpt about the confessions. I always found the spectacle of the forced confessions one of the most hypnotic and awful parts about the whole thing. Like I've said time and time again, I can't help but put myself in those people's shoes ... and I try to imagine what the hell would have to happen to me, psychologically, to make me confess to something I didn't do, and to denounce my family and friends publicly. It's so incomprehensible - to me, on this side of the fence ... living as I do, never having to face those challenges ...

Conquest talks a lot about the confessions, and why they were SO important to Stalin's plan.

EXCERPT FROM The Great Terror: A Reassessment, by Robert Conquest

The question naturally arises, not only why the accused made the confessions, but also why the prosecution wanted them. In the public trials, as Radek pointed out in the dock, there was no other evidence. A case in which there was no evidence against the accused, who denied the charges, would clearly be rather a weak one by any standards.

In fact, confession is the logical thing to go for when the accused are not guilty and there is no genuine evidence. For in these circumstances, it is difficult to make people appear guilty unless they themselves admit it. And it is easier to stage-manage a trial of this sort if one can be sure that no awkward defendant is going to speak up at unpredictable intervals.

In general, moreover, in the public trials of Zinoviev and the others, the confession method can be easily accounted for. Stalin wanted not merely to kill his old opponents, but to destroy them morally and politically. It would have been difficult simply to announce the secret execution of Zinoviev. It would have been equally difficult to try him publicly, without any evidence, on charges which he could vigorously and effectively deny.

Even if confessions seem highly implausible, they may have some effect on skeptics, on the principles that there is no smoke without fire and that mud sticks. Even if the confession is disbelieved, a defendant who humbly confesses and admits that his opponents were right is to some extent discredited politically -- certainly more than if, publicly, he had put up a stout fight. Even if the confession is disbelieved, it is striking demonstration of the power of the State over its opponents. It is more in accordance with totalitarian ideologies that a defendant should confess, even under duress: it is better discipline and a good example to the ranks. (Those who would not confess properly in court were sometimes provided with posthumous confessions, to keep up the standards, as with the Bulgarian Kostov in 1949.)

These are rational considerations. But it is also clear that the principle of confession in all cases, even from ordinary victims tried in secret, was insisted on. In fact, the major effort of the whole vast police organization throughout the country went into obtaining such confessions. When we read, in cases of no particular importance, and ones never to be made public, of the use of the "conveyor" system tying down team after team of police investigators for days on end, the impression one gets is not simply of vicious cruelty, but of insane preoccupation with a pointless formality. The accused could perfectly well, it seems, have been shot or sentenced without this frightful rigamarole.

But the extraordinary, contorted legalism of the whole operation remained to the end. It would have been possible simply to have deported thousands or millions of people on suspicion. Yet perhaps 100,000 examiners and other officials spent months interrogating and guarding prisoners who did not, during that time, even provide the State with any labor. One explanation advanced in the prisons was that, apart from a hypocritical wish to preserve the facade, the absence of confessions would have made it much more difficult to find fresh inculpations.

It is also clear that the confession system, involving one single type of evidence, was easier to stereotype down the whole line of investigators than were more substantial methods of faking. When evidence of actual objects was involved, there was often trouble. In the Ukraine, a group of Socialist Revolutionaries confessed to having a secret arms cache, at the instance of an inexperienced interrogator. The first "conspirator" confessed to having put it in charge of another man. The second man, under torture, said that he had passed the weapons on to another member. They went through eleven hands until, after a discussion in his cell, the last consignee was urged to think of someone who had died whom he knew well. He could only remember his former geography master, a completely nonpolitical character who had just died, but maintained that the examiner would never believe him to have been a conspirator. He was finally persuaded that all the examiner wanted was to get rid of the arms somehow, so he made the confession as suggested, and the examiner was so delighted that he gave him a good meal and some tobacco.

We mayt also feel that with the establishment of the confession principle in the public trials, its abandonment with lesser accused might have been taken in NKVD usage as an implied criticism of the trials. The principle had become established that a confession was the best result obtainable. Those who could obtain it were to be considered successful operatives, and poor NKVD operative had a short life expectancy. Beyond all this, one forms the impression of a determination to break the idea of the truth, to impose on everyone the acceptance of official falsehood. In fact, over and above the rational motives for the extraction of confessions, one seems to sense an almost metaphysical preference for it.

As early as 1918, Dzerzhinsky had remarked, of enemies of the Soviet Government, "When confronted with evidence, criminals in almost every case confess; and what argument can have greater weight than a criminal's own confession?" Vyshinsky was the great theorist of confession. He regarded a confession, however obtained, as "in itself grounds for a conviction," and recommended prosecutors and investigators to make a practice of getting the defendant's testimony in his own handwriting, as looking more voluntary. He added, "I personally prefer a half confession in the defendant's own handwriting to a full confession in the investigator's writing," thereby, as a recent Soviet legal commentator remarks, "creating the appearance of the 'voluntary nature' of this testimony." (One prisoner reports that after several days of bullying and beating to make him sign a confession which he had not read, with the interrogator showing especial rage at his obstinacy, he found himself unable to speak or use his hand, whereupon the interrogator put a pen in his fingers and signed it thus.)

Vyshinsky's remark is interesting, as showing some awareness on the part of Stalin's entourage of the basic incredibility likely to attach to confessions. But as to their general desirability, we can note that Vyshinsky was not a man likely to intrude his own prejudices in a matter in which Stalin was deeply concerned. We can take it that basically the idea must have been Stalin's own. It involved endless thousands of men and women in days and months of mental and physical torment.

Peter Belov

Okay, so I owe this entire post to John. NONE of what I share here has ANYTHING to do with me, or my own research abilities (well, I do go off on a tangent about set design - and that's all me - but everything else is from John).

Thankfully, I have these blog-friends out there who just ... supply me with links and interesting factoids and jpegs and translated articles - stuff they think I would be interested in (whether it be Seamus Heaney, Elron Hubman's evil empire, Tara Reid's lushy boob-exposing exploits, or Stalin) - Uhm, how's THAT for a bizarre list of interests - but anyway, it's all very cool. One of my favorite by-products of blogging.

John sent me a couple of links to the work of the artist Peter Belov - a dude I'd never heard of. I opened up the first one and literally gasped when I saw the image (click below - it's the first painting below). I won't presume to even say why I think it is a good and powerful painting - let's just say I cannot stop looking at it. The subject matter itself, of course, endlessly fascinates me ... but to see it, uhm, poeticized, dramatized like that ... There's such horror in it. The horror of the 20th century. It's astonishing.

The second image John sent me is also below the fold - the context is very important to get what the hell is going on in that one, although any Russian would understand immediately. The box all the little people are walking into is a box of White Sea Canal cigarettes. The building of the White Sea Canal was one of Stalin's enormous "public works" projects - built entirely by forced labor from the massive prison system. 150,000 convicts worked on that canal and it is estimated that 100,000 of them died under the harsh working conditions. 100,000. It's hard to even comprehend. Belov, obviously, comprehends.

His work immediately moved me. I want to see more. I want a whole book of his work.

Who is this guy? I've Googled him but there's nothing there.

So then John sent me an article about Belov which he translated for me. Thanks, John!!

Check it out (I've put the translation below.). Personally, I love it that he was a set designer - I realize I am totally biased but when I found out this little fact that he was in the theatre it didn't surprise me at all. Based on the two pieces of art I've seen. There's something deeply theatrical (and by that I mean - mythic - archetypal - grandiose ) in those two images. He's dramatizing something - which obviously is what so much of theatre (and set designing, let's not forget) is about. Sets are rarely just literal representations. They are meant to enlarge the theme of the director, they are meant to show underlying emotions or struggles. Even the most literal of sets - a kitchen, a living room - are carefully planned so as to illuminate the underlying messages, themes, etc.

A director will say to a set designer in the first production meeting: "I really want to go for the feeling of being trapped. I want the audience to feel how suffocated these characters are."

That's what the set designer is told. The director will talk in emotions, will not say: "I want a sink here, a lamp there ..." That kind of detail usually comes later. The FIRST thing the director says is: "here is the FEELING I am going for" and it is up to the set designer to take that feeling and manifest it into some kind of a set.

Think of the transparent screens written into Glass Menagerie, where slides can show, but where you can also see through to the next rooms. The set is obviously supposed to be where the family LIVES - but it's more than that. It's supposed to also represent the poetic themes Tennesee Williams was going for.

Sorry to go on and on like that - but those two dramatized images of Belov's work show this sort of duality that you see in so many really good set designs. They are literal paintings, obviously - you can recognize things, objects are clear, the paintings are not impressionist, or abstract. But it's also showing a story, and Belov's feeling about the story.

And the feeling came right across to me. I feel the horror in those paintings. They are clear, cold images ... with a world of horror beneath them.

It also amazed me that these paintings were basically just stacked up in his studio for years - he obviously couldn't show them, or share them. But he HAD to paint them anyway.

Here's the article about this man:

The Time Through Which We've Come The Paintings and Sketches of Peter Belov.

Evg. Vasilev

Thirty-five of the fifty eight years of his life, Peter Belov devoted to the theater. After graduating in 1953 from the school / studio MAAT, he was the chief artist for a series of Moscow and other theaters. His last 14 years he spent at the Central Soviet Army Theater, where he worked on over 150 shows. The exhibition of Peter Belov's paintings and sketches 'The Time Through Which We've Come', opening in the Literary Museum on Trubinkovsky street, is presenting pieces of his set decorations for the plays of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Rasputin [no, not that one - John], Virty, Visnevsky, Zorin, Ginsburg...

But these works constitute only a small part, and likely not the main part, of the exposition. Peter Belov was a remarkable painter and artist overall, and judging from the exhibition, it is precisely his non-theatrical paintings and drawings that were his focus. It is obvious that his paintings and drawings were not a secondary pastime, some sort of exercise for his brush technique he undertook in his spare time. The fact that the products of his easel were the most soulful, agonizing, and moral of his works is immediately apparent.

It is precisely through these works that the artist wished to describe himself, his times, and his relationship to them - stern, honest, imbued with pain and bitterness. Of course his works were never entered into the portfolio of official art, which they sharply contradicted, and therefore it is most likely that these were seldom seen during the life of the artist. They were stored in his studio, and only recently have seen by the wider world.

The works of Peter Belov shock with his strength, internal tension, visual expression and totally modern syle. The themes? They are at the core sharply social, dramatic, tragic, even when he paints "The Shroud of Nerl", "Eternal Rest", "Candle", "Pasternak", "The Consecration of Mikhail Bulgakov", "Dandelions" , "Pleshcheev Lake", "My Entire Life: an Auto-portrait". Hard, confusing, and bitter was the life which he and his generation led. Even the autumn scenery seems sinister, dark, watchful.

Most particularly, this cruel, pitiless time is symbolized by several poster-like anti-Stalinist works - "Komendant of the Special Detail", "1941", "White Sea Canal", "The Crows Have Come, or the April Plenum". He did not paint Stalin -- remarks Anatoly Smelyansky -- but himself, his youth, all of us. The paintings of Peter Belov suddenly burst into the air of today's culture, dissolving into it. "White Sea Canal", or "1941"; have become divorced from the artist for many, as is befitting a beautiful poster or a folk song.

The exhibition is showing photographs, painting and printing materials -- items of Peter Belov's -- from his family's collection. They show the artist as a strong, deeply thinking, and shining personage, who, in the words of Sergei Yursky "was one of those phenomena whose existence made Perestroika and Glasnost inevitable."

Two paintings below ....

The Books: "In Siberia" (Colin Thubron)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is the last of the "Russian trilogy" - and it's called In Siberia, by Colin Thubron.

Thubron took the train across Siberia in the mid-1990s - following the collapse of Communism. He writes:

I was trying to find a core to Siberia, where there seemed none; or at least for a moment to witness its passage through the wreckage of Communism -- to glimpse that old, unappeasable desire to believe, as it fractured into confused channels, flowed under other names.

It's a haunting book - I highly recommend it (as I recommend all of Thubron's stuff).

Here's an excerpt of his trip to Komsomolsk.

From In Siberia, by Colin Thubron.

It was almost November, and the Baikal-Amur Railway had carried me north along the river valley to within a hundred and fifty miles of the Pacific, to Komsomolsk-na-Amur. Hooded and quilted against the cold, I tramped down streets carved out for the heavy traffic of a future which never came. Komsomolsk was Stalin's "City of the Dawn", founded by young Communist pioneers in 1932 far from the Trans-Siberian and the eyes of foreigners: a galaxy of warplane factories, submarine yards and concentration camps, cradled in xenophobia.

I had expected a place of worn ugliness. Instead, austere streets lined by facades of dull gold radiated away in a faintly forbidding classicism. The replication of their stuccoed brick lent them a muted theatre. In their stately shabbiness, they looked older than they were. The snow was falling along their avenues in wet, heavy flakes so that little infidelities of style (gauche friezes, useless colonettes), the crumbling corbels and collapsing balconies, faded down long vistas of puritan uniformity, almost beautiful.

On the banks of the Amur, swollen a mile wide, a granite boulder marked the landfall of the first Komsomol volunteers. They had arrived on two steamers, the Columbus and the Comintern, in May 1932, and began to build their city in virgin taiga, spending the first winter in tents. The Soviet press turned them into a legend of young heroism, and the local museum was still reverent with their leftover mess-tins and paraffin-lamps, while diaries and letters recorded the hardships of dwindling supplies or an early scurvy victim ("the first grave in our future city").

The town's buildings are still blazoned with old pieties: cornsheafs and banners and Lenin heads, and with the city's motif of a Komsomol cadet rising from the sea. The First Builders Avenue runs for seeming miles towards a sheaf of defunct smokestacks, and a monument raised to these pioneers portrays them climbing ashore in a windblown vanguard beside the Amur. Yet they march out of another moral world, whose paeans to metallurgical plants and blast furnaces, always on the brink of overtaking America, evoke easy cynicism. It has so quickly, cruelly, gone. When I inspected the memorial I saw -- instead of the stock musclemen of Socialist Realism -- a rather incompetent-looking and naive gang of youths. Beyond them, for hundreds of yards, the start of the First Builders Avenue had disintegrated to a track of weed-sown concrete dribbling through scrubland.

For it went through an old concentration camp. In fact the whole city was haunted by these sites. The 'First Builders' had barely formed a bridgehead before 100,000 political and criminal prisoners were herded in to build, and were soon to be followed by thousands of Japanese prisoners-of-war. Unnmarked mass graves still scatter the city, with Japanese memorials to their dead. Komsomolsk's older inhabitants say their home town was not built by Komsomols at all, but by convict labour.

And now the city was emptying, its rationale faded. Its secretive distance from any industrial center turned it illogical. Some of its arms factories were closing down, or exporting their submarines to India, or flying-boats to China, or converting to the manufacture of gliders, trawlers, and yachts. All the same, I was not sure if I was permitted here. Nothing near Komsomolsk was on my visa. But the women managing my hotel, immured in one of the blocks built by Japanese prisoners, explored