Reading Travels: Over There, in the Country of The Revolution

Mona:

“One thing I can vividly recall about my life under communist ruling was that you were asked to sacrifice most tangible benefits and rights for an abstract construct and the slight possibility of a better future for your children.”

Soon after the 1989 fall of communist regimes, a friend of my mother’s lent me a poor translation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and that book stuck with me. Later I will read it in a better edition and realize that the narrative flaws were not entirely the translator’s shortfalls. Yet for many years “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was unique in the way it grasped the fundamentals of totalitarianism as only the accounts of expats and survivors of political oppression did. Orwell does not only refute the Stalinist version of a communist regime but any regime built on the same fundaments. Other refutations I had read –Istrati , Gide- seemed to be focused more on the specific of Stalinism than on the flaw of the ideology that lead there .

Now I know that if I would have read Darkness at Noon earlier, I would have realized that Orwell’s work is not unique, not in the way mentioned above. Koestler grasps as well the idea that the whole ideological construct is flawed and it could not have ended any other way than it did end –in a self-destructive totalitarian regime. However there are major differences between the two works and therefore they remain worth to be read as unique masterpieces.

Nineteen Eighty-Four ’s dystopian structure leans towards a theoretic approach that can be applied to many a totalitarian regime. The story does not linger any specific ideology besides the one that applies to any totalitarian oligarchy or autocracy. Darkness at Noon focuses on the Communist (Marxist –Leninist) Utopia - like the central role of History in the doctrine. In fact Koestler accomplishes a very thorough and well founded critique of  Marxism and its communist interpretation noting its intrinsic religious nature whilst maintaining the pretense of science. [1] .Yet his theoretical digressions have less impact on the narrative quality of the story and the authenticity of its characters than they do in Orwell's case. Unlike Orwell's characters that are /or end up to be completely dehumanized , Koestler's personages are ultimately human.


Darkness at noon is the story of detention, trials and execution of the Old Bolshevik guard during the late 30’s Stalinist purges. Its main character Nikolai Rubashov was most  probably inspired by the figure of Nikolai Bukharin, the best known Marxist theorist among the Bolsheviks and former Stalin’s mentor. It is perhaps not a mere coincidence that Rubashov had been also the mentor of his own interrogator Ivanov, the mastermind that builds the 'logic trap' in which Rubashov will finally fall.  Ulitmately  Rubashov’s figure represents any of the old guards’ theorists – be it Bukharin, Trotsky, Kamenev or ... He is an almost inhumanely heroic figure – the kind that is not stopped neither by torture, nor by feelings in his pursue to achieve the Party’s will and what he thinks is ultimately the path traced by an impartial, deterministic History that is above the faith or actions of individuals or even groups. Yet during the story his humanity is revealed by his shortfalls, his vanity as well as ability to show pity and feel remorse. And also to doubt…




He is first interrogated by his former friend and apprentice, Ivanov who attempts to lure him into signing a confession not through torture but by using the same logic and reasoning process he had learned once from Rubashov himself. However, in the third part of the novel, Ivanov suddenly disappears after obtaining a signed confession from Rubashov in which the later admits to have doubted as well as to oppositional reasoning but to no subversive action or treason. He is replaced by his own apprentice Gletkin, who uses tougher methods such as sleep deprivation to get Rubashov to sign several confessions in which he finally admits to subversive actions and plots against the Party and his ruler. He ends up giving up and signing all of them except one. He tries his best to fight against the absurdity of each accusation individually though he knows from the start that the war is already lost. Why then does he still fight each battle? He finds hard to explain it himself… Vanity or perhaps an attempt to preserve his own sense of dignity. Or perhaps because he is trying to convince himself that the Revoolution is not lost, that there is an actual reason for all the sacrifices he made - Little Loewie, Arlova, a career in astronomy... Yet, in the end , Rubashov does admit his guilt in a public trial and he is executed… His confession is centered around a question echoing Bukharin’s letter to Stalin : “why do I have to die?”[2]. And this is ultimately a question with a double meaning (why did I give up my life for…).



His first interrogator, Ivanov is also a member of the old guard. Yet, unlike Rubashov he states that his is not moved by pity, doubt or his own feelings. Ivanov is perhaps the only character that seemed to have renounced any trace of humanity, a long time ago when he woke up in a hospital to discover his leg was gone and thought about suicide. It was Rubashov who changed his mind and thought him to think himself above pity or self-pity. This is how he motivates his actions at the beginning of the interrogatory – he owes Rubashov his own life, therefore he will help Rubashov keep his as long as he signs a confession admitting to reactionary thoughts. However, as soon as Rubashov had signed this confession he disappears and we are told he was himself arrested, convicted and executed. Yet, Ivanov’s last conversation with Gletkin throws a shadow of doubt on wherever he was indeed arrested and convicted because he tried to protect his old friend or he staged his own disappearance in order to remove even the possibility of hope from Rubashov once his first confession signed…



Another interesting character is the nameless no. 402, a former czarist officer , a survivor of the real old guard –the one that lacks a name and personal history. That is because he plays an impersonal role – that of Rubashov’s doppelganger. He is the only friend that Rubashov has left in the end and that is because in spite of their apparent differences they are quite similar. In fact I could only think at one essential distinction …


But if you are indeed interested in finding out what distinguishes the supporter of the czarist autocracy from the supporter of the communist one, besides the fact that one wears a monocle while the other one a pince-nez, you must read the book …


[1] By “religious nature” we denote any theoretic system (ideology) that clings to a core of fundamental ideas even when any factual evidence refutes them. In this sense, the belief of economists that they can provide a rational explanation of human behavior no matter what is also religious in nature. Or as Djilas puts it :"The major flaw of Communism is their belief of sole knowledge of the laws of society, and their sole right to control society. This is a dogmatic religion" (The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System 1957 p.3).
[2] Rumor has it that Bukharin's last note to Stalin asked the same question ""Koba, why is my death necessary to you?" http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/nov/13/featuresreviews.guardianreview6