In his Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Heinrich Heine perceptively observes at one point—writing of the twisted ways of human political psychology—that "a secret predilection for the cause in which we formerly fought and suffered always continues to nestle in our hearts," even when we have outwardly disavowed or outgrown it. (Snodgrass trans.)
Heine had in mind his own youthful partisanship for Protestant Christianity—which he later shed but never entirely forgot (the ethnically Jewish and professedly "pantheistic" Heine's relationship to religion was complicated—see my earlier post on the subject). But the point applies equally well if not even more strongly to anyone who's ever been a Marxist.
In writing his 1941 memoir of wartime France, Scum of the Earth—Arthur Koestler was still fresh off of his disillusionment with the Communist Party. Stalin had just signed his pact in blood with Hitler. The German and the Soviet dictators were dividing up Eastern Europe between them. Koestler was appalled—and it drove a permanent wedge between him and his erstwhile friends.
But 1939 also finds Koestler still unmistakably nursing the "secret predilection" of which Heine spoke. The wound of disillusionment was still fresh enough for that. And indeed, the predilection is so obvious that it appears to have embarrassed the author in after-years. Koestler appends a preface to the later edition, apologizing for the book's tone of Popular Front–era leftist "romanticism."
Koestler's "secret predilection" for the cause he had just deserted comes across most of all in his continued ability to be shocked by Stalin's crimes. When he first received word that the Soviet Union had switched sides and aligned itself with Hitler, his English girlfriend merely shrugs: that's just the sort of thing Stalin would do, she observes. But Koestler is still Communist enough inside to be baffled by the sudden change of policy.
And indeed—I felt the same way earlier this week, when the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov walked into his summit with Donald Trump sporting a "CCCP" (a.k.a., Soviet Union) sweatshirt.
The fashion choice was obviously a taunt, and possibly a threat. It was intended to subtly suggest to American negotiators that Russia had won the Cold War after all—and maybe that the Baltic states and other former unwilling member states of the Soviet Empire should fear that, after Ukraine falls, they will be next. In short, choosing to wear that sweatshirt was an overt act of bullying aggression.
And—much like Koestler's English girlfriend—I suspect many people will simply shrug and say—"well, they would do that. That's just the kind of thing Putin and his thugs do." To which I—like Koestler—am left spluttering: But, but, but...
Of course, I am well aware intellectually at this point that the iconography of the Soviet Union has been reduced to a mere emblem of Russian nationalism and neo-imperialism. To Putin and his cadre, the acronym CCCP conveys only a dim, nostalgia-inflected memory of a time when Russia appeared to rule half the world, and could crush with impunity its weaker neighbors.
But to anyone who has ever spent part of their life thinking of themselves as a Marxist—no matter how much time has passed since they ostensibly outgrew and shed the label—the cynicism of this appropriation of the Soviet name can only seem shocking.
We still—no matter how many times we've been disabused and disillusioned all over again on this point—have some inward notion that the name "Soviet" is supposed to represent at least the pretense of moral universalism and an emancipatory world mission.
The fact that it conveys now only a reactionary nationalism—a neo-fascist Russian aggression that has allied itself to the extreme right and religious obscurantism throughout the world—as a way to divide the Western alliance—will still on some level manage to surprise us all over again every single time.
In our surprise, the "secret predilection" for the abandoned cause rears its head.
I remember something Eric Hobsbawm once wrote after the fall of the Soviet Union. Now, Hobsbawm probably remained an unreconstructed Stalinist longer than any other member of his generation; but eventually—as a fundamentally honest person—he too had to admit that the Soviet experiment had been an abject social and economic and political and moral failure.
And yet—the "secret predilection" could not help but reassert itself—even as late as the 1990s. I can't find the passage at the moment, but—somewhere or other—Hobsbawm observed that, even in one of its last years as a country—in its very twilight and senescence—the Soviet Union still made a point of awarding its final Lenin Peace Prize to Nelson Mandela.
In this, they were in advance of the Nobel Committee by three years.
How was one to explain that—Hobsbawm wanted to know—unless there was still—beneath the rubble of dictatorship and genocide and atrocity and colonialism and horror—some lingering shred of universalistic idealism hiding somewhere in the Soviet experiment?
It was a thin lifeline indeed to cling to. It wasn't much to go on. But I'm glad Hobsbawm didn't live to see the even worse cynicism of today—when Russian politicians invoke the memory of the Soviet Union without even that lingering, tiny pretext of moral universalism or the pursuit of social justice—when they use the label of "CCCP" instead to recruit white nationalists and theocrats to their banner—enlisting Europe's far-right neo-fascist parties as part of their would-be coalition of illiberal states, in order to pit the Western democracies against each other.
I suppose it's far from the first time this has happened. I suppose this new alliance between Russian neo-Soviet expansionism and far-right European and American white supremacism is no stranger fundamentally than the Stalin-Hitler pact that finally broke Koestler's allegiance to the Communist Party.
But I too—like Hobsbawm, like Koestler—yet retain enough of that "secret predilection" that these betrayals of principle and idealism—no matter how many of them there have been, no matter how predictable they have become, no matter how regularly they recur—still manage to take me off guard.
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