U S A Y . U S S R dwight macdonald T h e M u s ic P u r g e nicolas nabokov On Soviet Literature vladimir weidle Empire or Free Union? waiter padley Soviet Panslavism waiter kolarz Life in the Soviet Union Today— three interviews USSR: A Layman’s Reading List of Basic Books on Russia also Memory and Childhood Amnesia ernest g. schachtel In Distrust of Merits (poem) marianne moore 75^ • SPRING 1948 74 p o l i t i c a In Distrust of Merits MARIANNE MOORE* Strengthened to live, strengthened to die for to the fighting— it’s a promise— “ We’ll medals and positioned victories? Never hate black, white, red, yellow, Jew, They’re fighting, fighting, fighting the blind Gentile, Untouchable.” W e are man who thinks he sees,— Not competent to who cannot see that the enslaver is make our vows. With set jaw they are fighting, enslaved; the hater, harmed. O shining O fighting, fighting,— some we love whom we know, firm star, O tumultuous some we love but know not— that ocean lashed till small things go hearts may feel and not be numb. as they will, the mountainous It cures me; or am I what wave makes us who look, know I can’t believe in? Some in snow, some on crags, some in quicksands, depth. Lost at sea before they fought! O little by little, much by much, they star of David, star of Bethlehem, are fighting fighting fighting that where O black imperial lion there was death there may of the Lord— emblem be life. “ When a man is prey to anger, of a risen world— be joined at last, be he is moved by outside things; when he holds joined. There is hate’s crown beneath which all is his ground in patience patience death; there’s love’s without which none patience, that is action or is king; the blessed deeds bless beauty,” the solder’s defense the halo. As contagion and hardest armor for of sickness makes sickness, the fight. The world’s an orphans’ home. Shall contagion of trust can make trust. They’re we never have peace without sorrow? fighting in deserts and caves, one by without pleas of the dying for one, in battalions and squadrons; help that won’t come? O they’re fighting that I quiet form upon the dust, I cannot may yet recover from the disease, my look and yet I must. If these great patient self; some have it lightly, some will die. “ Man’s dyings— all these agonies wolf to man?” And we devour and woundbearings and blood shed— ourselves? The enemy could not can teach us how to live, these have made a greater breach in our dyings were not wasted. defenses. One pilot— Hate-hardened heart, O heart of iron, iron is iron till it is rust. ing a blind man can escape him, but There never was a war that was Job disheartened by false comfort knew, not inward; I must that nothing is so defeating fight till I have conquered in myself what as a blind man who causes war, but I would not believe it. can see. O alive who are dead, who are I inwardly did nothing. proud not to see, O small dust of the earth O Iscariotlike crime! that walks so arrogantly, Beauty is everlasting trust begets power and faith is and dust is for a time. an affectionate thing. We vow, we make this promise * Reprinted, with permission, from “ Nevertheless” by Marianne Moore. All rights reserved by the Macmillan Co. Coming in the Summer Issue politics Peter Blake: A.M.G. in Germany— a Study in Stalinization VOLUME 5, No. 2 (Whole No. 40) SPRING, 1948 Dwight Macdonald: The Wallace Campaign, a Political Business Managers Judy Miller, Nancy Macdonald. Interpretation Editor: Dwight Macdonald Ancestors (6): KURT TUCHOLSKY. First translantion of POLITICS is published quarterly at 45 Astor Place, New York Tucholsky's famous "Testament." Plus his "H err Wendriner 3, N. Y., by Politics Publishing Co. Telephone: GRamercy 3-1512. under the Dictatorship" and a biographical evaluation by Subscription: $3 for one year, $5 for two years. Add 30c a year Martin Salander. for Canada, 50 for other foreign countries. Single copy 75c. Anton Ciliga: Battle of the Churches in Italy—Catholic v. Copyright February, 1948, by Politics Publishing Co. Reentered as Communist. (A special article from Rome.) second-class matter March 10, 1948, at the post office at New York, Nathan Dershowitz: The Socialist Labor Party N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. James Blish: Slicks and Pulps «^^ ^ >357 SPRING, 1948 75 USA v. USSR DWIGHT MACDONALD OST of this issue deals, unfavorably, with the Soviet democracy (i.e., the subordination of Europe to Russia). Union. It will be asked— and, in fact, has been It is the SS man in his raven-black uniform with the Masked— why an anti-war pacifist journal runs such death’s head insignia as against the Commissar— or, more a series at this time. Is this not— “ objectively,” of course lately, the People’s Minister—in his business suit with a —contributing to the war spirit over here? Is not the com­ fountain pen clipped in his breast pocket. We are slowly mercial press already doing the job ad nauseam? Don’t al­ learning that the Commissar is even more deadly than most all of the likely readers of p o l i t i c s already know the SS man. pretty well what kind of society there is in Russia? Why Our education has been slow because our Communists does p o l i t i c s here— and in the past— devote so much and fellow-travellers have until recently been generally space to criticising Russia and so little to criticising fas­ accepted as part of the liberal-labor movement. Compare, cism and native reaction? for example, “ America First” (1938) with the Wallace These questions deserve answers. In general, it may be Campaign (1948). The historical situations are similar: said that, in the judgment of the editor, and of some an “ unsatisfied,” expanding young empire in conflict with contributors, USSR today is in the same position as Nazi the older, sated imperialisms of USA and England; total­ Germany was a decade ago: i.e., it represents the main itarianism against democratic capitalism; native move­ threat to socialist and liberal values. We regard Soviet ments which pretend to be seeking world peace, and en­ Communism, and its American friends and dupes, very roll their mass following on that basis, but actually advo­ much as we regarded Hitlerism and Hitler’s American cate a policy of appeasement of the imperialist competi­ supporters. Just as it did not occur to socialists then to tor, whose leaders are, furthermore, not too unsympathetic keep silent about Hitler’s infamies because of Roosevelt’s with that competitor’s government. Yet consider how wide­ war plans, so there sems no justification for silence now ly the two movements differ. America First was not very about Stalin’s infamies. Nor is it true that the commer­ successful: it did not put up Lindbergh as a presidential cial press is already doing the job: there is a difference candidate in 1940 and was unable to prevent the inter­ between criticising USSR as an imperialist competitor of ventionist Willkie from getting the Republican nomina­ USA and showing how the Soviet system contraverts tion. Its modem similar has a candidate who will probably socialist values; it is the latter task that is attempted here. get from 4 to 8 million votes this fall. America First was Finally, the liberal and radical audience to which p o l i t i c s defensive on Nazism: its leaders felt obliged constantly to is addressed has had and to some extent still has more reiterate their opposition. But Wallace and his backers illusions about USSR and Communism than about fas­ openly denounce the USA as the main threat to peace and cism and, say, the Republican Party. The Soviet myth is constantly defend Russian acts of aggression (as in the more powerful than even many of Stalinism’s opponents Czech putsch). America First was not run by Bundists, realize; I speak from personal experience. This last point nor was it closely correlated to German foreign policy; is a capital one, and deserves some elaboration. such tactics would have been politically absurd: only home-grown fascism, of the Long-Smith-Coughlin variety, The Great Illusion has ever had a mass base in USA; Nazism appealed only The superiority of Communism over Nazism as an to German-Americans. But the Wallace movement is run ideology for export is manifest if one compares Hitler’s by veteran Stalinoids and is intimately correlated to Soviet speeches with Stalin’s. The former are hysterical: full of foreign policy (cf. the 24-hour reply Stalin gave to Wal­ violent emotion, self-contradictory, convincing only to lace’s recent “ open letter” ; or the campaign to block the those within the circle of the speaker’s neurosis. The latter, Marshall Plan). Wallace devotes one-fifth of his current paranoid: sober, ploddingly consistent, entirely convinc­ campaign book, Toward World Peace9 to a detailed de­ ing so long as the central delusion is not questioned. And fense of Russian foreign policy and a mendacious white­ it has been hard for us to question because it preserves wash of such internal Soviet scandals as the suppression of the means of 19th century Progressivism— such as rational the Trotsky opposition, the forced-collectivization famines, planning, scientific advance, democracy, popular education the Moscow Trials, and the forced-labor camps.