3. An Indictment of Communism by Notable Writers
Communist leaders compelled artists and writers to praise Communism from the viewpoint of socialist realism. Even under the Communist regime, however, the artists and writers who pursued true art, at home and abroad, indicted Communism for its falsehood.
André Gide (1869-1951), a French writer who had been fascinated by Communism, attended Gorky’s funeral in 1936, and afterwards traveled in the Soviet Union for a month. He candidly expressed, in his book Back From the U.S.S.R., his disappointment with the Soviet society he saw on that occasion. He said in the introduction,
Three years ago I declared my admiration, my love, for the U.S.S.R. An unprecedented experiment was being attempted there, which filled our hearts with hope and from which we expected an immense advance, an impetus capable of carrying forward in its stride the whole human race…. In our hearts and in our minds we resolutely linked the future of culture itself with the glorious destiny of the U.S.S.R. 27
However, after coming in contact with the Soviet people during his one-month trip, he wrote the following impressions: In the U.S.S.R. everybody knows beforehand, once and for all, that on any and every subject there can be only one opinion…. So that every time you talk to one Russian you feel as if you were talking to them all. 28
Finally, he fiercely denounced the Soviet Union as follows:
What is desired and demanded is approval of all that is done in the U.S.S.R.,…. And I doubt whether in any other country in the world, even Hitler’s Germany, thought be less free, more bowed down, more fearful (terrorized), more visualized. 29
The Soviet writer Boris L. Pasternak (1829-1960) secretly wrote Doctor Zhivago, in which he expressed his disappointment with the Russian Revolution, and advocated the philosophy of love. That book was published, not in the Soviet Union but in foreign countries, and was received favorably. It was decided to award Pasternak the Nobel Prize but, as a result, at home he was expelled from the Writer’s Union and denounced as a reactionary anti-Socialist writer. Pasternak stated in that book, through Zhivago, who represented his own conscience, the following:
Marxism a science?… Marxism is too uncertain of its ground to be a science. Sciences are more balanced, more objective. I do not know a movement more self-centered and further removed from the facts than Marxism. 30
He also denounced the attitude taken by the revolutionaries toward intellectuals, saying, At first everything was splendid. “Come along. We welcome good, honest work, we welcome ideas, especially new ideas. What could please us better? Do your work, struggle, and carry on.” Then, you find in practice that what they meant by ideas is nothing but words―claptrap in praise of the revolution and the regime. 31